Here's one for the techies out there. I have my old titanium powerbook that took a bad dive off the kitchen table onto the tile floor last summer and broke the hinges. It still 'works' after a fashion and I had some plans to put it into a little decorative wooden brief case which sort of worked, but now it's getting awfully flaky and the moment I try to do anything with it, the internal fan comes on full blast.

Sooo - I'm looking at my various options, from taking the whole thing apart in order to improve the heat dissipation, but I suspect that won't help much given the density of the internals. Or, I'm wondering if I can pull out the cables for the screen and wire them into either a DVI or VGA connector so that I can at least salvage the screen and connect it to a Mac Mini with a cool wooden stand or something like that.

Anyone have any tips on either of these options? Pins outs for the monitor and hints on how to put together the power feed? Or advice on getting the machine to start behaving itself again?

Bummer, You have several options here. First...fix it there is a ton of places to buy parts. Second, sell it as parts. Its worth more apart than together. Third put it in a new case or make it into another computer. A briefcase would be sweet as would an iMac style case. As for cooling properties, the original case was designed the way it was for a reason, to help it cool itelf. You need to find a way to put the bottom case back on or create a new way to cool it with heatsinks. There is a ton of heatsink out there that will work, but the hard part is getting the to stay on. My advice is heatsink glue or tape with some sort of homemade bracket also. Putting the screen seperate is tough. You would need a power supply and to figure out what wires go where.Good luck-Maestro

put it in a new case, buy a vga touch lcd and throw the system in your car. Thats what I would do at least. Of course, you can always just design a new case for it and use it as a desktop computer, or repair it and use it as a powerbook still. Like Whitlock says, there are tons of options. I would love to have one of these to mess around with. Its small and versatile, what more could you ask for.

Anyways, what would be an interesting idea is if you like to read books, turn it into a e-book reader. Purchase a very large book, make up your own title and put yourself down as the author on the cover. Then mount the screen, along with the jog dial from a 3 button mouse. If you need to, hook it up w/ Bluetooth and have a wireless keyboard and mouse. Make a custom stand, and everyone would think you have a cool book until they look harder.

Hmmm - a collection of interesting ideas, although unfortunately unless I find a reasonable way to deal with the current cooling problems, the machine is just too loud. Does anyone know of a source for Titanium service manuals?

I'm hoping to be able to get some insight on the pinouts on the internal ribbon cables for separating the monitor, power draw requirements for the monitor and the other internals to see about the best options for cooling the system.

Also curious if anyone has cut the monitor cables and resoldered them in order to get some distance between the CPU and the screen. Any effect on the image quality/reliability?

And I like the idea of the VGA touchscreen, even if it's not in the car - would make an interesting addition to the stereo to be an iTunes controller. But unless I find the overheating problem, I'm going to be pretty limited in my options :-( Although that approach would let my close it up in something so that the fan noise would be muted somewhat. Hmmm.

On a related topic - other than building my own, does anyone know of any alternative case sources for the Titaniums? Mine is pretty badly corroded. Rebuilding it with a plastic enclosure is sure to exacerbate the cooling problems, unless I integrate some interesting heat sinks underneath or something.

Cutting the wires is very risky. They are so thin and close together. There is a place to get take apart manuals (free) on the net of every mac model, but I dont recall the name. Ill look for it and get back to you. Also, if you want to lower the heat (plus use the book for simple uses) you could down clock the cpu. Just a thought.-Maestro

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